Care to Go for a Drive?

Hello and welcome! Yesterday I posted about tagging along for a ride to the northeastern end of the city, where Nick had some stuff to do. Here is a series of shots I took from the car, as we were driving back downtown.

The first couple of pictures are taken on the Don Valley Parkway, going south.

The bridge in the picture above is called the Price Edward Viaduct (aka Bloor Street Viaduct) and was built in 1918. If you're interested in historic pictures, here is a series that were taken during the building, including the bridge in use on opening day.

The taller side-rail barriers, called The Luminous Veil, are a more recent addition because this bridge has the unfortunate distinction of being popular for suicides. (Sorry to be morose, but it's true) There have been at least 400 self-inflicted deaths from it since it was built, so they added the deterrent railing in 2003, and since then there have been none. Sadly though, this has had no effect on the overall suicide count in the city.

These next shots are taken once we had turned onto Lake Shore Boulevard, traveling westward.

The Royal York Hotel (pictured above) opened in 1929 and at the time was the tallest building in the British Commonwealth. I have been inside it but only in the dining room. What I saw of it is gorgeous and I'm happy to say that Nick and I won a one night stay there as part of an exciting raffle we were lucky to win during Fashion Week last March (discussed in this post). I can't wait to spend the night there and will surely have a post dedicated to this visit once it happens.

In front of it you can see a large blue awning thing. This is covering the current major renovation going on at our main train station. It already was a spectacular historic building, so I am very keen to have a look at the renovations when they're done.

Of course, as you may have noticed in many of my cityscape photographs of Toronto, it is difficult not to include the CN Tower. In fact, you can even see it in the first pictures. Right next to the CN Tower is The Dome (officially called The Roger's Centre). This is our biggest stadium and the roof retracts when the weather is nice.

This last picture is of the city taken from Bathurst Street, located to just west of the city core. We were on the old Bathurst Street Bridge, (which I did a post on here), when I got the picture.

To give you a feel for how long the drive took, it was about 20 minutes. Mind you, traffic was remarkably light that day. And although the changing cloud formations in these pictures might make you think otherwise, I promise you that all these shots were taken within that 20 minute time-span!

Thanks very much for taking a drive with me. I appreciated having you along for the ride :)loulou

5 Responses to Care to Go for a Drive?

Hey Loulou,
Beautiful pictures…but yeah…what a sad story about the suicides…that’s a bit of a downer when you see the bridge, no?
But I guess that’s part of its history now.
Looks like you guys had beautiful weather.
Thanks for sharing :)
XOXO

That’s incredibly sad and creepy about that bridge. It is such a beautiful structure though. I just love cityscapes. I am always taking photos from the car on my iphone when we go through Philly. Toronto has been on the top of my list of cities to visit for a while now. I couldn’t help but always want to visit there after being so obsessed with Degrassi when I was younger…hahaha (guilty pleasure, I admit!). Have a lovely weekend Loulou! xo Marisa

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